Well, I can tell you that you've thought about it more than 99.9% of the people that I've ever come across.
There's a fundamental problem in orientation, though, that nearly all historical research suffers from, and I hope you can understand my description of it. That is, researchers almost invariable take the evidence easily available to them in it's current context, put it all together in one way or another, shove it backwards in time and call it history. That's not the way reality works and not a proper way to understand history.
If you read back over what you wrote, try to detect that sense that Babylon was a hazy place, an undefined source of myth and legend, with influence spreading by undescribed means and mechanisms. That's the product of working backwards.
Babylon was, of course, as real as Cleveland is to us, just as concrete and mundane, with real people doing real things for real reasons. And so it was to the people of the time, including, for example, the various people in the Bible who talked about it. Is Cleveland a mystical place to anyone today? Generally speaking, no it is not.
So the correct approach is to try to figure out what went on there--and why--from the tiny pieces of evidence that made it down to us. If we're not ready to cite this evidence specifically and give an account of where it fits in to the picture, why should anyone believe the tale we gin up more than anyone else's?
We can confirm our hypotheses by then examining our present world. That is, we should ask, "Is what we've said about the past consistent with and explanatory of what we see now in our past's future?" With that question, do you see now how the arrow of causality is finally pointed the right way?
All this takes a lot of research, organization, and discipline. That's probably the reason no one does it, it being easier--again--to just shove ideas backwards towards a past that can't argue with you. But then again, I did it and I'm no one special, so it's possible.
Well, I can tell you that you've thought about it more than 99.9% of the people that I've ever come across.
There's a fundamental problem in orientation, though, that nearly all historical research suffers from, and I hope you can understand my description of it. That is, researchers almost invariable take the evidence easily available to them in it's current context, put it all together in one way or another, shove it backwards in time and call it history. That's not the way reality works and not a proper way to understand history.
If you read back over what you wrote, try to detect that sense that Babylon was a hazy place, an undefined source of myth and legend, with influence spreading by undescribed means and mechanisms. That's the product of working backwards.
Babylon was, of course, as real as Cleveland is to us, just as concrete and mundane, with real people doing real things for real reasons. And so it was to the people of the time, including, for example, the various people in the Bible who talked about it. Is Cleveland a mystical place to anyone today? Generally speaking, no it is not.
So the correct approach is to try to figure out what went on there--and why--from the tiny pieces of evidence that made it down to us. If we're not ready to cite this evidence specifically and give an account of where it fits in to the picture, why should anyone believe the tale we gin up more than anyone else's?
We can confirm our hypotheses by then examining our present world. That is, we should ask, "Is what we've said about the past consistent with and explanatory of what we see now in our past's future?" With that question, do you see now how the arrow of causality is finally pointed the right way?
All this takes a lot of research, organization, and discipline. That's probably the reason no one does it, it being easier--again--to just shove ideas backwards towards a past that can't argue with you. But then again, I did it and I'm no one special, so it's possible.